The transition from 2 core to 4 cores per processors cam really fast! Not only the chips are available, real products has started becoming commercially available. Looks like this strategy must have been in process for quite some time now. Intel had started deemphasizing higher clock speeds as the solution for higher performance for quite some time now. In between came hyperthreading architecture, then the multi cores!
Chip performance has jumped significantly with each of these two generations. To harness this enhancement in raw power there's quite a few things that are needed. Very first thing would be the system bus just outside the chip boundary or the FSB in a desktop. Then of course OS needs to be able to schedule processes optimally. Load balancing and hence scaling will depend a lot on how fine grained processes are or can be made. Ideal situation is of course when all 4 cores are busy all the time, except the task switching times.
So it is safe to assume that by the time all these factors have been fully utilized it'll be another couple of years. Hopefully some more multi core upgrades can be expected by then. However, performance gain has to be approaching the diminishing return part of the curve. I had speculated on some factors that would cause this to happen in an earlier post.
Posts
No comments:
Post a Comment